Seducing the Ultimate Villain

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I got dropped into a novel with exactly one job.

Seduce the male lead. Bleed his bank account dry. Then die, right on schedule.

So I played my part. Every night I made his life hell. Every day I spent his money like it had personally wronged me.

And he smiled.

Soft. Warm. Like I was something worth keeping.

Let me use him. Let me drain him. Never once flinched.

I could not, for the life of me, figure out what I was doing wrong.

Then my system, the one that had been offline for days, came screaming back online.

"Host. HOST. You slept with the wrong man."

"That is not the male lead."

"That is the single biggest psychotic villain in the entire book."

Me:

...

Chapter 1

I woke up in the dark to the sound of a man breathing like it hurt.

Low. Ragged. Barely held together.

When my eyes adjusted, I found him across the room, broad shoulders and long legs folded into a sofa like a blade someone had just set down.

He was shaking. Small, controlled tremors, the kind a body gives off after it's been through something violent and hasn't caught up yet.

The collar of his black uniform hung open. Sweat, or maybe blood, sheened across his chest. The air still smelled faintly of gunpowder.

Whatever had happened in this room, he'd walked out of it. That was the read I got. Someone had come for him tonight, and it had not gone their way.

I did the smart thing and poked him.

"Hey"

The world spun.

Next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the bed, a wall of heat and weight pinning me down, close enough that every nerve pulled tight.

A voice against my ear, low and wrecked.

"Who are you."

Some context.

I wasn't Vivienne. I'd transmigrated into her. Vivienne Sinclair, the story's designated gold-digging villainess.

In the original book, Vivienne played Haven's devoted girlfriend right up until he lost everything, then dropped the act, burned through his last savings, made a toy of him by night, and threw him to the black market to rot. He didn't rot. He came back darker, built an empire, paid her back a thousandfold, and when she was half-dead and no longer entertaining, put a bullet in her and called it a kindness.

My job was to run that script to the end. Sleep with him. Bleed him dry. Die on cue.

Which made the man currently caging me to the mattress the male lead. Haven.

That was when something hard pressed into the small of my back. A quiet click.

I glanced down. A gun. His gun, aimed right at the spot where my kidney was trying to relocate.

Okay. Cool. Love that for me.

The male lead does not come standard with a firearm. This part was not in the walkthrough.

My hands started to shake. Ice slid down the backs of my arms.

His voice came again, calm, and that was the worst part.

"I'll ask one more time. Who are you."

The intent behind it was not up for debate. This man would pull the trigger and finish his coffee afterward.

So I did what the script demanded, no hesitation. I burst into tears and threw myself at him.

"Who am I? Babe, it's me. Your girlfriend."

He went rigid.

That wrecked voice repeated it, slow, like the word didn't fit in his mouth.

"...Girlfriend."

I nodded hard enough to hurt, one twitch of his finger from the afterlife.

"Yes. Babe, don't you remember? It's me. It's Vivi."

Chapter 2

"You called me baby yesterday. Now you're looking at me like you've never seen me before?"

"I'm I'm falling to pieces here."

My voice cracked clean in half on the last word.

It was terror, technically. Out loud it came off as heartbreak, which was so much more sympathetic.

He laughed, quiet.

Then his face dropped closer, filling up the whole of my vision.

Sharp brows. A high, clean line of nose. Those cold, deep eyes with my own stunned face floating in them.

My heart forgot its next beat.

Right. It really was him. Haven. In a book stuffed with beautiful people, the author had clearly spent the entire budget on this one face.

"Baby." He held my eyes, and his voice went soft, coaxing, worse than the gun somehow. "If you're really my girlfriend, then you know exactly what you're supposed to do right now. Don't you?"

His breath moved over my ear.

A live current shot from there down to my fingertips.

Wait.

Was this the part where I followed the script? Slept with him?

Except something was off.

In the book, Haven couldn't stand it when Vivienne touched him. Flinched from her like she carried something catching.

So why was this version of him practically daring me to.

I must have just stared, because he huffed out a breath and started to get up.

"Can't even fake it right," he said. "Pathetic."

Something in the way he said it landed a beat too knowing. Like he already had my number and was letting me keep the act anyway.

Excuse me. Did he just review my performance.

I shoved myself upright, grabbed a fistful of his sleeve, hauled his face back down to mine, and kissed him like I meant it.

Fine. We'll do it your way.

The man was built. Objectively. I'd walk away from this.

For the mission. All in.

His pupils shrank. His hand came up like he might push me off.

And didn't.

Whatever he'd been holding onto snapped, without a sound, and he pulled me in by the waist, and the kiss stopped being mine.

I'll spare the details. There aren't many I can recall with my dignity intact.

Somewhere in the dark and the heat, I got wrung out until crying was the only move I had left.

That was the day I truly understood the phrase you brought this on yourself.

Haven, that absolute menace of a man, had stamina that should be tried at The Hague.

Half-conscious, I thought of the one line the book had used to describe Vivienne.

The Sinclair heiress, a monster behind a lovely face, who tormented him night after night and would not let him go.

The first time I read that, I'd been outraged on his behalf.

Now it read like a rsum.

Night after night.

Sis. Respect. Your cardio was unreal.

I opened my eyes again to a full-body ache I don't have polite words for.

One hand pressed to my lower back, I looked around.

Black marble floors. A chandelier dripping with cut diamonds. Every surface in the room quietly breathing money.

I gaped.

The bed alone was king-size, three times bigger than anything I'd owned in my old life.

A tear of pure joy slid loose.

I knew Vivienne came from money. I did not know she came from this.

Broke my entire life, and finally, finally, it was my turn.

Mid-happy-cry, a bowl of warm broth slid into view.

Haven's voice arrived with it, easy, familiar.

"What's with the tears. You don't like it here?"

"This is... your place?" I said.

"What else would it be. Yours?"

I rubbed my eyes.

Rubbed them again, because I flatly did not believe them.

No. Hold on.

Somewhere deep inside me, something started to bleed.

Didn't the male lead go bankrupt? Why does a broke man have a mansion the size of a small country?

Was this what they meant when they said even a dead empire buries you richer than you'll ever get to live?

Chapter 3

Beside me, Haven watched the tears and misread them completely.

The warm pad of his thumb brushed the corner of my eye, and he started, a little stiffly, to comfort me.

"Don't cry. Last night... I couldn't hold back."

"Drink the broth. There's painkiller in it. It should help."

Me:

...

The memory of certain moments from the night before surfaced, and the heat in my face evaporated the tears on its own.

I said "oh," took the bowl, and drank in silence.

My stomach did settle.

Haven kept watching me. "About last night," he went on. "I'll take responsibility. Stay here with me from now on."

"Huh"

A mouthful of broth nearly went down the wrong pipe. My eyes flew wide.

This was not how it was supposed to go.

By the original plot, wasn't I the one who was supposed to be bankrolling a broke, ruined Haven? How had it flipped?

When I didn't answer, he raised an eyebrow. "What is it, baby. Last night you swore you'd wreck me in bed so badly I'd need therapy. Backing out already?"

He remembered that?

That was the garbage I'd talked last night, when he'd asked in that low voice whether I was tapping out and my competitive streak had detonated.

It also, technically, happened to be my mission.

But.

If I actually followed through, would I live to see the end of the assignment? Or just expire of exhaustion first.

Nerves won. I started improvising, small and shifty.

"About that... let's not. See, I'm really particular about beds. Yours is too unfamiliar. I'd never fall asleep."

Haven smiled.

"That's fine, baby. If you don't like this bed, I'll have last night's bed moved over."

"That one shouldn't feel unfamiliar anymore. Should it."

Me:

...

Wasn't the villainess supposed to leave the male lead speechless? Why was I the one with nothing to say.

Who exactly was bullying whom here.

A few days slipped by.

For reasons I couldn't crack, my system had gone down the second I landed in this world and would not come back. Whatever I tried, dead air.

So I gave up on the useless thing and kept running the transmigration tasks myself.

Three of them, total.

Sleep with the male lead. Fleece the male lead. Die.

Task one was going suspiciously well. Unlike in the book, Haven never acted like my touch was killing him. He just kept smiling like a warm front rolling in.

Which made me mutter, privately:

The man is a walking hazard.

Muttering done, I got up and headed for his office.

Time for task two. Money.

Bank card in hand, I shoved the door open, all bravado. "Haven, I'm broke, I need"

The words died. My stomach dropped clean through the floor.

The wide office was full of bodyguards. Trained ones. The instant the door swung, they turned as one and locked onto me.

Then, in flawless unison, raised a few dozen guns my way.

Me:

...

Look. My endgame is to die by the male lead's hand. But I can still tell the difference between one gun and thirty.

My knees folded and I very sensibly dropped into a crouch, arms over my head.

"Please don't kill me, sirs! I was just passing through, I'll go, I'll go"

Then, a soft laugh.

Haven, lounging with his cheek propped on one hand, head tipped, the corner of his mouth tilting up.

"Don't be scared, baby. Come here. What was it you wanted to say."

Chapter 4

At his word, the room finally lowered its guns.

My scalp was still crawling.

...There was absolutely no finishing that sentence now.

I shuffled over, my earlier swagger down about ninety percent, and pivoted to something soft and wheedling.

"Babe. My card's empty. Think you could Venmo me ten grand? Just to see if you're good for it."

Haven took the card, glanced at it, and frowned.

My eyes lit up.

Was the derailed plot finally about to snap back to canon?

In the book, after Haven lost everything, Vivienne quietly burned through the last of his money. His sick mother lost her medical funds and died in pain because of it. That was the wound of his life, the thing that turned him. From then on he loathed money-grubbing women down to the bone.

I looked at that furrowed brow, and something hopeful kicked up in my chest.

This was it. He was starting to hate me. The plot was climbing back onto its rails. My mission was in reach.

Then he flicked the card aside.

And while I was still mid-celebration, produced a different one. Matte black, and obviously several tiers above mine.

He took in my slack-jawed stare, tone as flat as a man reading off grocery specials.

"Why are you using a card like that. A hundred-grand limit. What's that good for. Use my black card."

Me:

...

What do you mean, "only" a hundred grand.

That is a whole hundred thousand dollars.

If your finances count as bankrupt, what exactly does that make me. A panhandler?

I stared at that black card until my mouth went dry and my knees went weak, quietly humbled by my own poverty.

A few more days of champagne and gold leaf, and I snapped out of the fantasy.

No. I could not keep rotting like this.

My mission was to run the plot to its end. By now the plot was so scrambled its own author wouldn't recognize it.

In the book, one night and one payday were all it took for Haven to hate Vivienne to the marrow.

So why, after I slept with him daily and fleeced him daily, was he still beaming at me?

Had someone quietly bumped my difficulty setting to nightmare?

I got furious about it for a solid second.

There was no living like this.

Right then, that stupidly beautiful face leaned in and kissed my cheek.

"What's got you upset, baby. Who ruined your mood?"

"That limited-edition bag you missed at the last auction. I just bought you a room full of them. Want to go see?"

My face split into a grin on the spot.

"Yes. Yes I do."

Fine.

This life... might be survivable after all.

"AAAAAHHHH!"

That night, alone and asleep, I was ripped awake by a shrill, piercing screech.

I rubbed my eyes, groggy. "Who is that. What's all the noise."

The familiar electronic voice was coming apart at the seams.

"It's me, Host, it's the System!"

Oh?

Now I was awake. I sat up, thrilled.

"You're finally back. I can't even check my progress without you. Come on, pull up my mission status."

The System went strangely quiet.

After a long beat, it spoke again, thin and careful.

"I have good news and bad news. Which do you want."

I paused.

I've always liked the sweet before the bitter. "Good news first."

The System said, "The good news is, Haven's affection for you is sitting at one hundred percent. Route cleared."

Haven, of all people, actually liked me.

Was my charm really that lethal?

Chapter 5

I lit up, warm and smug all over. "And the bad news?"

"The bad news is," the System said, openly weeping, "what is the POINT of winning him over?!"

"Your mission is to find the male lead and run the plot. And you have not laid eyes on so much as his shadow. And you've got the nerve to ask me how your progress is going!"

Me:

My brain blue-screened on the spot. "What do you mean. Isn't Haven the male lead?"

"Not only is he not the male lead, he barely qualifies as a person. He is the single biggest psycho villain in the entire book. A monster with a body count and a real gift for cruelty!"

Me: ???

Those words. Attached to the Haven who kept buying me rooms full of handbags.

I took a few deep breaths and rubbed my aching skull.

"Hold on. Before I transmigrated, you told me, clearly, that the male lead's name was Haven"

"I did NOT!" The System was righteous. "Don't you frame me. What I said was, the male lead is Hayden. The villain is Haven. How do you mishear that?!"

Me:

...

My guy. Those are the exact same sound.

Mixing them up isn't the crime. Getting it right would've been the miracle.

I didn't have the energy to argue with a system this unreliable, so I asked the only question that mattered.

"So what do I do now."

The System said, "What do you think. RUN."

Its voice shrank. "Do you understand what 'biggest villain' means? It means crueler than anything you can picture."

"In the male lead's hands, you're one clean bullet. In the villain's hands, there's no telling how you die."

"Run for your life while you still can!"

My skull throbbed from the shrieking, and on pure reflex I climbed off the bed, turned to bolt.

And every drop of blood in me went still.

Haven stood in the dark of the doorway, silent, and I had no idea how long he'd been there.

His face gave away nothing. But there in the shadow, something about him had gone cold enough to lift the hair on the back of my neck.

"Baby. Who are you talking to?"

"Where are you planning to run to."

This was no different from meeting a ghost in broad daylight